Karlsruhe (dpa/lsw) - Notwithstanding the recently decided extension of the service life for nuclear power plants, the new EnBW CEO Andreas Schell remains with the nuclear phase-out. "We are in favor of phasing out nuclear energy, and we will continue to do so," he told the German Press Agency when he took office on Tuesday.
Schell made it clear that politics is in charge of the issue. "The federal government has asked us to keep Neckarwestheim II connected to the grid until mid-April to ensure security of supply. Our task now is to ensure the safe operation of the systems and to produce the electricity as we have agreed. To the tasks we are hired."
The EnBW-Meiler in the district of Heilbronn is one of the three nuclear power plants still in operation in Germany. On Friday, the Bundestag decided to continue operation until April 15 in order to secure the power supply in winter in view of the energy crisis.
According to earlier information from EnBW, the power plant in Neckarwestheim is to be shut down on December 31st. The reactor core of the plant is then to be reassembled with existing partially used fuel elements and restarted in order to ensure electricity production of up to 1.7 billion kilowatt hours of electricity.
Schell succeeds Frank Mastiaux at the Karlsruhe energy supplier, who put the former nuclear power company on a course with renewable energies.
